


The Outcasts Club

by idrilhadhafang



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fans & Fandom, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Characters Reading Fanfiction, Characters Writing Fanfiction, Friends to Lovers, Inspired by Real Events, M/M, Metafiction, Occasionally Gets Fandom Critical, Past Online Harassment, Slow Burn, past stalking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25189123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: In which Ben Solo strikes up an odd friendship with a writer for another pairing: Poe Dameron.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Ben Solo, Poe Dameron/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1
Collections: Darkpilot Creator Breakdown, Darkpilot Thematic Stories, The Darkpilot Library





	The Outcasts Club

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slinden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slinden/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> Author’s Notes: For slinden. Based on real events (how we met), though I might have tweaked some things. Okay, a lot. I still hope you like it, slinden!
> 
> P.S. I hope I don’t sound vain in this.

Ben Solo hadn’t thought that he would actually go looking for and get invested in Johnlo fic (the pairing between the X-wing pilot known as John Doe and the Knight-of-Ren-turned-Supreme-Leader-turned-Vader-rip-off Kylo Ren) but here he was. 

The fact that _The Rise of Starkiller_ had made the Kiralo ship canon should have been a cause for celebration, except for the fact that the ship’s canon status was confusing at best (what with Kylo dying, and JJ Abrams, the film’s director, comparing the two to siblings. Whatever you say, man who can’t make up his damn mind...) and then...then there were the fans. Kiralo hadn’t started off as bad. Hell, there were still good people there. But it was like there was something wrong in the fanbase, with the stalking the actor who played Kylo and trying to get him to divorce his wife, and harassing and gaslighting an autistic woman who just had mild criticisms of the fandom at large (including kicking her from a Discord server when she had made a point that the Discord server wasn’t to blame. It seemed Elphaba was right; no good deed went unpunished indeed), and harassing a sixteen year old girl off Tumblr for saying she didn’t like a fanfic. Just nasty stuff.

Ben hadn’t wanted to believe it in the beginning. It was easy thinking that they were the good guys fighting the Anti Empire. Now... But you didn’t bring up such things to your friends in the Kiralo fandom, especially if you didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

Ben was at least at his childhood home. He was staying over for Christmas; the Skywalker family was weird, but then again, all families were weird, weren’t they? Even lying in bed, he looked at the latest work from an author known as AceWing.

Built On A Maybe by AceWing  
Galaxy Wars Sequel Trilogy

18 Dec 2021

**Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings** , John Doe/Kylo Ren, John Doe/Jacen Starkiller | Kylo Ren , Tags Contain Spoilers, Post-Galaxy Wars: The Rise of Starkiller, Time Travel Fix-It, Oh Abrams I’m Not Mad I’m Just Disappointed, The Kylo Ren Redemption He Should Have Gotten

Jacen doesn’t know how, but he’s got to make things right.

Part **1** of Johnlo is Canon

Language: English Words: 1090 Chapters: 1/? Comments: 70 Kudos: 50 Hits: 1,090

Time travel. That should be interesting. Was it based on the World Between Worlds that was introduced in _Rebels?_ There had been one YouTuber who had speculated that the WBW could be used to stop Sidious’ rise from happening, but...

It was clicking on it that Ben found himself riveted. He wasn’t expecting to empathize with Jacen’s asshole uncle, but here he was. And he was swallowing frequently, trying to keep back tears. 

Fuck, it seemed that AceWing was really good at this...

***

“Armie!”

Armitage Solo, formerly Hux, rolled his eyes. “You know, I have ears, Ben. You don’t need to yell. And you also have legs...”

“Yeah, I know.” Ben sighed. “What I was saying, before you decided to be a smug asshole about it, was that I read a new fic.”

“If I had a dollar for every time Kylo Ren was brought back from the dead or didn’t die so he could shag Kira, I’d be rich.”

“Well, this isn’t one of those stories. A Kiralo story, that is."

“Did hell freeze over when I wasn’t looking?”

“Oh, very funny,” Ben said. “Basically, someone wrote a Johnlo story.”

“Johnlo...huh. Now we’re talking rarepair.”

“Well, yes, but it’s good. It’s really good. I mean...Kane actually redeemed himself! I can’t believe it.”

“Hell’s frozen over _and_ pigs are flying. I just know it.”

Ben sighed. “You’re not wrong. But...look, Armie, I’ve mostly been, um, lurking on his page, leaving kudos when I can...should I comment?”

“You don’t need my permission. As long as you don’t go all Annie Wilkes on him...”

“Cute,” Ben said, rolling his eyes.

“I’m serious. Just comment. Nothing wrong with it.”

“I’m just worried that Ushar — ”

“Well, what Ushar doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Ushar was the headmaster (or mod) of the Kiralo Discord Ben was in. He was a ruthless mod, Ben knew that; even putting aside that incident with the autistic woman, he could definitely be cruel when you’d broken a rule. Some of the other inhabitants could be cruel too; Finn, one of Ben’s friends there, had expressed nervousness about getting on their bad side. Especially after they had piled on Sam’s actor after he’d made a joke about Sam and Kira having sex. It wasn’t like Ben agreed per se, but it wasn’t like Sam’s actor was a bad person.

“Look,” Armie said, “They’re a bloody cult. If Ushar asked them to jump, they’d just worry about how high just to spite the anti boogeymen.”

“True." Ben sighed. “When I’m done with my current WIP, I’m...thinking of leaving.”

“Why not now?”

“Well, to begin with, I don’t quit things.”

”Normally, I’d admire that.”

Ben had been working on a WIP of his own, a canonverse AU where Kira had been brought to the Jedi Academy and she and Jacen (a.k.a. Kylo) had grown up together. He’d been given flak for a subplot involving Jacen and John, which didn’t make sense. A lot of Kiralo fics had instances of Kira starting out dating someone else, or Kylo starting out dating someone else. Then again, those people weren’t usually portrayed in a positive light. 

(The fact that John was commonly seen as the Gaston to Kylo’s Beast didn’t help)

”I’ll get out when I get there,” Ben said. “Really."

***

It was after dinner with his family that Ben realized that he didn’t have to go to AceWing. Somehow, impossibly, AceWing came to him. It was a comment on his Johnlo spin-off story of his Jedi Academy AU, detailing John and Jacen’s ultimately doomed romance. There had been times when Ben had wondered about Johnlo. After all, their interactions in TFA...they were pretty solid. And Kylo seemed to see the X-wing pilot as a worthy opponent. 

But the comment was there:

_Hi there. :) I saw some of your kudos on my stories and I’m really flattered! I love your Jedi Academy AU, especially how you portray John. Your portrayal of John and Kylo’s romance is genuinely, heartbreakingly beautiful. You can buy how much they love each other. I was wondering; I have a Discord dedicated to the Johnlo ship and I was wondering if you were interested in joining?_

Him. Somehow, AceWing thought he was a good writer. Ben couldn’t say he was used to it. Completely. He was overshadowed by much larger Kiralo writers, after all. 

But he clicked on the link that AceWing had provided. It seemed, like Kira, he was taking his first steps into a larger world. 


End file.
